We probably all do it to some degree, leave emails that we want to keep as a record of an important point or document on our email account. We want to be able to use the SEARCH function on our email account to be able to find something easily. Maybe we’ve even set up a file system within our email account to categorize the various saved emails that we have.
In principle, that’s a great idea and can prove very helpful and useful. But what if that email account provider goes away? What if it’s not that they’re purchased by another company, but instead, fold due financial reasons and competition. Then what?
This thought came to me when there were layoffs this past week at Yahoo! and also because they’ve acknowledging that they’re having some financial problems due to competition. What if Yahoo! were just to completely go away and all of the SAVED emails that we have, were just to *poof*, go away. Where would that leave us?
While not EVERY email that we’ve saved is critical/crucial/private/confidential, some no doubt are though. It’s true that computers were introduced and developed to help the world to become a “paperless society”, sometimes though you HAVE TO have a hard copy to keep a record of something. So what to do?
For all of the critical/crucial/private/confidential emails that you may have, it would be a good idea to, dare I say it, PRINT a copy of them for your records. Put them in a REAL file folder and mark it as to the category that it fits into. Then you can be MORE certain that when you need to refer to it and look at it, that there will be a copy that you can actual have in your hands. This isn’t a “The Sky is Falling” post. Just a reminder to make sure that you protect and have access to what’s important to you. YOU have the control and the power. Don’t always leave it to others to be responsible for what’s important to you.
Have you ever thought about this?
I self host my business email account. I won’t use the free services for the mission critical business email and any notes that I save are saved on my hard drive which of course like my email account is set for an automatic back up. My email account isn’t going anywhere and if it did I could quickly set it up through another hosting account and I wouldn’t lose little if anything. I enjoy all the features that the free accounts offer and more. Self hosting takes almost no effort on my part and is well worth it.